Elon Musk’s xAI Cuts 500 Jobs Amid Shift to Specialist AI Tutors
Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI, has laid off approximately 500 employees from its data annotation team, according to a report by Business Insider. The decision, communicated late on Friday evening, impacts workers responsible for training the company's generative AI chatbot, Grok.
As reported, an email sent to staff indicated that xAI is reducing its focus on developing general AI tutors and will instead concentrate resources on specialist AI tutors. The message stated, "After a thorough review of our Human Data efforts, we've decided to accelerate the expansion and prioritization of our specialist AI tutors, while scaling back our focus on general AI tutor roles. As part of this shift in focus, we no longer need most generalist AI tutor positions and your employment with xAI will conclude."
Employees were informed that their system access would be revoked immediately. However, salaries would continue to be paid until the end of their contracts or until November 30, the report adds.
The company has reportedly made clear it is ramping up investment in specialist AI tutors across fields such as video games, web design, data science, medicine, and STEM. On September 13, xAI announced plans to expand this team tenfold, stating the roles were "adding huge value."
Notably, the layoffs follow recent reports that senior members of the data annotation team had their Slack accounts deactivated before the formal announcement was made.
In other news, earlier this month, Musk once again highlighted artificial intelligence, emphasizing the predictive abilities of X's AI chatbot, Grok. On his official X account, the billionaire shared a link to a live benchmark platform, urging users to test Grok's forecasting prowess.
In his first tweet, Musk wrote, "Download the @Grok app and try Grok Expert mode. For serious predictions, Grok Heavy is the best." He followed up with, "The ability to predict the future is the best measure of intelligence."
The link pointed to FutureX, a platform designed to evaluate how well large language models (LLMs) can predict real-world events. Developed by Jiashuo Liu and collaborators, FutureX presents AI agents with tasks spanning politics, economics, sports, and cultural trends, scoring their predictions in real time.